Pedestrians and Pedal Cyclists in a British, Dutch and Swedish Modelling Area

Abstract

This study looks at a number of travel characteristics of pedestrians and pedal cyclists in specific situations in Bradford (Great Britain), Groningen (The Netherlands) and Växjö (Sweden). A random sample of pedestrians in each of the three countries in a preselected traffic situation and a random sample of pedal cyclists in the same traffic situation, but only in the Netherlands and Sweden, were interviewed and questioned about, among other things, trip purpose, origin-destination, route choice motive and actual route choice. The study is meant to produce the necessary input data of a pedestrian and cyclist traffic micro model, one of the objectives of the project. This report only describes those data, that has potentially wider application than input for the model alone. One of the main, though hardly surprising conclusions is that travel characteristics (trip purpose, origin, destination) and composition of the walking and/or cycling population are largely dependent upon the function of the area under study. The situation in Växjö and Groningen are both important shopping centres for the town as a whole and the nearby villages. The Bradford area on the other hand has a more local shopping function and besides that it also has a cultural, recreational and residential function. The influence of age, gender and traffic intensities upon travel characteristics such as trip purpose and route choice motive is small